Here's a quick question concerning AIs and their home nodes.

Let's say we have a home node with a Device Rating of 6, meaning all its Matrix attributes are 6's across the board. Let's pretend this AI has an Intuition of 6. The home node's improvement would be the AI's Intuition / 2, or 3, making the home node's Response rating an effective 9.

What I'm asking is, does this make the AI's Response a 9? Or is it a 6 to represent the 6 that the node had prior to the AI jumping in? If it's the former, then it seems like having a riced out nexus with straight 6's is a good way to make a powerful AI even scarier. The rules are a little unclear on it, however, so I thought I'd ask, especially since one of my players is wanting to play an AI in my upcoming campaign.

Thanks.

From what I can tell, the AI's response is still 6, but the response of the node he is residing in is increased by 3 (up to 9 in your example). In effect, the AI has seperate matrix attributes to its home node - the AI's attributes are based off its stats, the node's attributes are based off its normal level + 1/2 the AI's relevant stat.

Of course, I still haven't figured out why the AI has a response attribute, but the matrix rules confuse me and I deliberately avoided them until I saw AIs in Runner's Companion.

AIs Response equals that of the node they're in. Their home node's Response is boosted by half their Intuition. In your example, the AI has a Response of 9.

Response is crucial because it tells you the AI's Initiative (Intuition plus Response) and is also the Attribute you use sometimes when jumped into a drone (Pilot Origin quality only). Of course, if they're jumped into a drone, they're actually in that node, so it wouldn't be 9 then (unless the drone was their home node), but you get the picture.

As AIs use their own System and Firewall, though, the boosts to the home node's System and Firewall don't help the AI, except insofar as they can share their home node with a disgusting IC that defends them from enemy hackers...

Can you tell there's an AI PC in my group? *grin*